What I like about it: There’s something quite thrilling about the way each melody takes every sharp angle it encounters, and how these sudden changes of direction emit a sense of careening wildly about… even as the changes are executed with a surgical precision. And so in this context, I find myself immensely enjoying how fluid and melodious each piece presents itself. There’s a sense of complex clockwork mechanics at play, and yet these melodies are as ephemeral as the effect of light beams on a sundial. This album resides in a shared place with New Jazz visions like Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors and Allison Miller’s Otis Was A Polar Bear, and if recent history is indicative of the future, I will be addicted to Karl Bjorå’s Aperture‘s The Most Obvious Solution for a very long time.

What I like about it: I like how the lovely melodicism of this recording is totally at the mercy of the forces of motion, and I like how Wako shows no limit to their ability to shape it. I like how the beauty of these pieces resonates with no less strength during passages of heavy dissonance than those times when a melody is sighed out peacefully. I like the pacing of the varying motions, so that changes present themselves with a certain force, but never to the point of jarring extremes.